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It is not an efficient way to compute decisions in the real world.

Suppose, for example, that you need a sequence of acts to carry out a plan?

Utilities must be over Outcomes consisting of your state of mind.  If this were true, your intelligence would operate as an engine to steer the future into regions where you were happy  Future states would be distinguished only by your state of mind; you would be indifferent between any two futures in which you had the same state of mind.

And you would, indeed, be rather unlikely to sacrifice your own life to save another.

• utility function that maps each outcome onto a utility
• (a utility being representable as a real number between negative and positive infinity)

adding to volume H or subtracting from volume B. They observe that whichever action they choose, the amount added or subtracted is the same. They are told it is called the difference.

Only after they have mastered this pre-numeric understanding of size and of part-whole relationships are they presented with tasks that require quantification.

This can be simple, like looking around a chaotic room and realizing you’re too messy.  Or it can be difficult, like looking around your social calendar and realizing you have no close friends.

If you skip the painful self-awareness step, then you won’t change.

• Is the problem your habits?
• Is the problem your approach?  Should you try a different diet, or find exercise that you’ll be passionate about?

Better to think of such rules as, "Imagine what a skeptic would say - and then imagine what they would say to your response - and then imagine what else they might say, that would be harder to answer."

Or, "Try to think the thought that hurts the most."

And above all, the rule:

"Put forth the same level of desperate effort that it would take for a theist to reject their religion."

Not every doubt calls for staging an all-out Crisis of Faith.  But you should consider it when:




• A belief has long remained in your mind;
• It is surrounded by a cloud of known arguments and refutations;
• You have sunk costs in it (time, money, public declarations);
• The belief has emotional consequences (note this does not make it wrong);
• It has gotten mixed up in your personality generally.




None of these warning signs are immediate disproofs.  These attributes make a belief very dangerous, and very hard to reject when it is wrong

The point is not to have shallow beliefs, but to have a map which reflects the territory.

I emphasize this, of course, so that you can admit to yourself, "My belief has these warning signs," without having to say to yourself, "My belief is false."

But what these warning signs do mark, is a belief that it will take more than an ordinary effort to doubt effectively.  So that if it were in fact false, you would in fact reject it.  And where you cannot doubt effectively, you are blind, because your brain will hold the belief unconditionally.  When a retina sends the same signal regardless of the photons entering it, we call that eye blind.

When should you stage a Crisis of Faith?

Again, think of the advice you would give to a theist:  If you find yourself feeling a little unstable inwardly, but trying to rationalize reasons the belief is still solid, then you should probably stage a Crisis of Faith.  If the belief is as solidly supported as gravity, you needn't bother - but think of all the theists who would desperately want to conclude that God is as solid as gravity.  So try to imagine what the skeptics out there would say to your "solid as gravity" argument.  Certainly, one reason you might fail at a crisis of faith is that you never really sit down and question in the first place - that you never say, "Here is something I need to put effort into doubting properly."

If your thoughts get that complicated, you should go ahead and stage a Crisis of Faith. 

(1) Decide on your goal and stick with it.

(2) Understand that to achieve your goal you need to use 'planned persistence' which involves carefully planned experimentation.

(3) Create a written plan of action of things to try.

(4) Try different techniques and monitor your results carefully.

(5) Discard what doesn't work and move on to your next experiment until you find the combination that unlocks your dreams.